Dogus Holding
Doğuş Holding is a leading conglomerate in Turkey, boasting a diverse portfolio of investments across various sectors. These include construction, real estate, tourism, energy, food & beverage production, automotive, retail, and media. The company also operates a large media portfolio, which includes television stations, radio channels, and online video / digital platforms, as well as publishing franchises of internationally recognized magazines like National Geographic and Vogue.
Media assets
Television: NTV, Star TV, Eurostar, TV8
Radio: NTV Radyo, Kral Muzik, Kral FM, Kral Pop Radio,
News portal: PuhuTV
State Media Matrix Typology
Ownership and governance
Doğuş Holding was founded in 1951 by Ayhan Şahenk, who built the company initially around construction. Following his death in 2001, his son Ferit F. Şahenk took over leadership and today serves as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the group. The Şahenk family continues to control nearly all of the media arm, with reports showing that they directly own over 99% of Doğuş Media Group. While some of the conglomerate’s subsidiaries in sectors like automotive and real estate are listed and partially publicly traded, the media division remains tightly held within the family.
Source of funding and budget
Doğuş Media relies primarily on advertising revenues to sustain its operations, though like other large conglomerates it also indirectly benefits from its parent company’s broad commercial interests. No detailed public financial breakdown exists for Doğuş Media specifically, making it difficult to assess the precise scale of its media revenues in 2024 or projected figures for 2025–2026.
Editorial independence
Editorial independence remains the most contested dimension of Doğuş Holding’s media operations. Since the early 2010s, its outlets have demonstrated a clear reluctance to challenge the government, reflecting the group’s strategy to safeguard its wider business interests in construction, real estate, and other lucrative sectors dependent on state contracts. This caution was most visible during the 2013 Gezi Park protests, when Doğuş-owned broadcasters, like other oligarch-controlled media outlets, refrained from covering mass demonstrations critical of the government.
Subsequent monitoring by international watchdogs, including Reporters Without Borders, has underscored the lack of pluralism in Turkey’s mainstream media landscape, where outlets owned by major conglomerates such as Doğuş are particularly susceptible to political influence. Local journalists interviewed in 2023 and 2024 reiterated that Doğuş outlets continue to avoid content critical of the government and follow editorial lines aligned with the priorities of ruling authorities.
No formal statutes or independent oversight mechanisms were identified that guarantee editorial autonomy for Doğuş Holding’s media assets. In practice, editorial directives are often shaped by political and commercial pressures rather than professional standards of independence. Despite speculation in 2019 that the group might distance itself from the Erdoğan administration, no substantive changes in editorial policy were observed in the subsequent years, including the most recent research phase in 2025.
September 2025